Brussels, 14/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - The Commission and European Parliament are urging the Latvian presidency of the Council of the EU to ensure that a consensus is obtained from member states on the European quota project. This project seeks to ensure that the boards of directors in major European companies quoted on the stock exchange have at least 40% of their members who are women.
During a debate at the European Parliament on Wednesday 14 January, the Latvian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Zanda Kalnina-Lukasevica, made a commitment to achieve this goal. Kalnina-Lukasevica did, however, acknowledge that negotiations at the Council had so far proved “difficult” and positions still diverged on the question (see EUROPE 11216, 11217). The Latvian presidency is, nonetheless, still hoping to obtain an agreement by June (see EUROPE 11227).
The European Parliament adopted its position more than a year ago and is ready and waiting for progress to be made at the Council (see EUROPE 10942). The rapporteur on the draft directive, Mariya Gabriel (EPP, Bulgaria) pointed out that support for this dossier was urgently needed and explained that they needed to stop using the pretext that this would be a burden for industry and “use the talent available”.
The European Commissioner for this question, Vera Jourova, said that she intended to step up efforts to speed up the adoption of the proposal on quotas. She pointed out that only legally binding measures could help contribute to greater gender equality in decision-making. She also provided assurances that respect for the subsidiarity principle still applied. This is mainly because of the fact that the Commission did not propose waiting for any particular result other than that qualifications, experience and performance at work should be taken into account during selection procedures. Jourova emphasised the fact that over the next few months under the Latvian presidency the legislative instrument would be better explained “because all the other ways have already been tested and have simply not worked”. (MD)